REAL LIFE NEWS: APOLLO ENGINES RESCUED FROM WATERY GRAVE
by Hazed
It must be great to be the head of a hugely successful multinational company. To have enough spare millions in your pockets to pay for the most expensive hobbies.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has just done something cool with his millions. He’s funded a deep-sea salvage crew who have raised a pair of engines from the Apollo missions.
The F-1 rocket engines were discarded as the Apollo spacecraft ascended towards space. They formed the first stage of the Saturn launch system, firing just 165 seconds as they lifted the rocket 67 miles up. They were then detached and left to fall into the sea where they have remained for the last fifty years.
Bezos and his team used sonar to find the engines and then sent a team of remote operated vehicles 14,000 feet below the surface of the oceans, to identify the motors and other scattered wreckage. They have raised enough debris to rebuild two of the rockets, which are now on their way to Cape Canaveral where they will be reassembled and put on display.
There’s some great pictures of the motors on the seabed, and on board the ship that raised them, at the source link below.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21880147
